ers as AOL-Time Warner. A vice-president from Walt Disney Co. testified, for example, that his company had stayed out of the AT&T-MediaOne Group merger and the open-access fight, but it was compelled to enter the AOL-Time Warner fray because of the market power the two companies will have. "This massive aggregation of market power cannot be left to voluntary promises of good behavior.
Both AOL and Time Warner have demonstrated their propensity to abuse their bottlenecks and market strength to limit and skew consumer choice and to inhibit competition (Connell, 2000, p. 3).
The point is a crucial one--once the monopoly comes into being, its power allows it to do what it wants to do, especially when one considers the political clout that such giant firms have, meaning that they can forestall interference from government regulatory bodies. This danger increases under the conservative Republican administration of President George W. Bush which has already shown a pro-business propensity and which will likely translate into a reluctance to challenge additiona
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